Sony Land - Animation / Rig / Previz

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Rarely do I have a chance to have this much input and freedom on the design and execution of a project. The brief was a few static mood boards of various vector styles, had to be in the woods, no people and that was about it. Length was open ended, all the vignettes and elements were up to me and I was the only person on the project until it was rendered by their in house team.

Initial blocking
For this first pass, I modelled everything except the animals, they were stock characters. I wanted the scene to look like you were inside a shoe box diorama. This was to keep the style similar to the vector boards, but also to prevent the team from having to model photoreal environment assets. Next was the sun, I wanted it to always be moving from left to right, showing the passage of time through the night, for a fun visual, but also so that the sun would rise over the end logo, clients love that. Getting the camera speed, focal length and env depth working took a bit to get working, the it conveyed the idea nicely.

First Pass
So the client liked the initial blocking, but had a few general notes:
-More animals
-camera slower travel speed
-more depth in the environment, vertically and distance
So with those in mind, I started extruding chunks of the ground, again, trying to keep the vector (now low poly) feel, and using the sculpt brush and soft select to make it a bit more natural. I really enjoyed how this process shaped the ground, combined with the flat trees and vague bg, I thought it was a good blend. I also tripled the depth distance of the environment and instead of a straight linear camera path it does a slow sloping J shape to add a bit more parallax while reducing the overall speed. With this new camera move, I fleshed out the env a bit more by adding a lake with an island, and a field at the end to over look the river bend under the logo.

When it came to the animals, I really pushed the idea little stories for their settings: the deer family drinking from the stream, the bear trying to catch fish, brought the wolf closer to screen on a bigger rock for the howl to read, and brought a deer back at the end to tie the spot together. I tried multiple types of flocking birds, but it conflicted with the skyline and sun, so I settled on a single bird, but would be hero animated to come closer to camera. This also allowed there to always be an animal on the screen at all times.

Final previz
The client really liked what they saw, but wanted to make it longer and slower, combined with updating their brief to allow a small road but no cars or people on it. Beyond those notes, go nuts. So with that, I tried to throw in everything I could think of in the remaining time I had left:
-better composition for the start and end frames
-clouds in the sky
-squirrel in the foreground at the start to add more depth and animals
-more animals: swarms of butterflies, moths around the fire, salmon jumping in the river
-small env animations: leaves, blowing grass, wave ripples, moon reflection on the water, shooting stars, rain, splashes, lightning, camp fire wood smoke, bending branches
-more vignettes: a boat tied to a dock bobbing in the water, a campfire with logs, road and tunnel
-interactive lights: campfire, street lights, lightning, sun

All of these smaller details and additions really took the piece to a new level for me. I'm still very proud of the work shown at this stage. Aside from the animals and the bushes, I had designed, modelled and animated everything. Even the lighting (which was all viewport legacy lights) for the sun and other interactive lights combined with the sky changing color and the env looking wet in the rain was done in the playblast with no post effects. And this was before Maya had ambient occlusion, anti alias and viewport motion blur, let alone raising the 8 viewport light limit.

After this stage, I rigged the animals that were properly modelled and animated the bear and salmon and squirrel at the start on the tree. The deer, bird, wolf and second squirrel were sent to other animators that I was overseeing. The client ended up rendering the env after making additional changes to it, but I still enjoy this version :)

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